Mind Mapping

In the Marketing Over Coffee LinkedIn group MindMaps came up as a topic. We talked about it this week and I said that I’d share more than I normally show in my Quarterly Review posts.

Here’s a full screenshot (click it for full size) with my gory details removed:

Here’s a zipped file if you have MindManager, or an exported Word Doc.

The process is simple – at the beginning of the year think about what you will accomplish on four fronts:

1. Family
2. Personal
3. Professional
4. Financial Goals

You’ll probably find that you have many of these quadrants already full of items, and that’s fine, it’s good to be able to give yourself some credit for your dumptruck full of stress that you’ve been taking for granted.

Some notes:

Family – Remember that your life is juggling, but not all the balls are the same. Your family is one of the glass ones, you drop that and it will never be the same. It doesn’t have to take all your time, but it does need to be first in your planning.

Personal – Here’s your one shot to pick something fun to do. Fitness also sets here, you’ve only got one body so you need to plan for it to last a while.

Professional – This will be different for everyone, but my mix has been the current job, side projects, and keeping your personal brand strong.

Financial – After the sands of time have blown away nobody will care about a few thousand bucks, but you do need to put some food on the table today. If you’ve been using Quicken, it’s pretty easy to forecast this stuff.

So from here, you need to check in at least once a month, better yet have a day once a week (Sunday nights tend to work well), where you look at your upcoming calendar and make sure you’ve made time for the big stuff.

Every quarter, update the scorecard to see how things are going. If you’ve got anything big planned please tell me about it, I’m still trying to fill my 2011 card.